love, sometimes personified as a deity, daimon, or cosmogonical, pedagogical and soteriological force, manifested in the process of demiurgy and within domain of providence

Long Description:

love, sometimes personified as a deity, daimon, or cosmogonical, pedagogical and soteriological force, manifested in the process of demiurgy and within domain of providence; for Plato, philosophy is a sort of erotic madness ( mania), because Eros, though implying need, can inspire us with the love of wisdom; Diotima in Plato’s Symposium describes education in erotics as an upward journey or ascent towards the perfect noetic Beauty; Plotinus uses the union of lowers as a symbol of the soul’s union with the One ( Enn.VI.7.34.14-16); Proclus distinguishes two forms of love: 1) ascending love which urges lower principles to aspire towards their superiors, 2) descending or providential love ( eros pronoetikos) which obligates the superiors to care for their procucts and transmit divine grace ( In Alcib.54-56); for Dionysius the Areopagite, who follows Proclus, the eros ekstatikos becomes the unifying factor of the cosmos.